Over 25,000 drop out of enrollment race for govt engg colleges

[Kalyan]

Over 25,000 drop out of enrollment race for govt engg colleges

Chennai: Notwithstanding the phenomenal increase in the number of aspirants for engineering degree courses this year, more than 25,000 students have skipped the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA 2009) process at the nascent stage itself.

    "This year 1,58,136 boys and girls had purchased the TNEA application forms. However, only 1,32,572 of them submitted the filled-in application forms to us when the deadline ended on May 31," TNEA secretary V Rhymend Uthariaraj disclosed on Friday.

    Thus, a significantly high 25,564 aspirants have given up their claim to participate in next month's single window counselling for admission into BE/B.Tech seats earmarked under the government quota. This is a huge deviation from the trend last year when only 10,856 aspirants had withdrawn from the race in the initial stage by not even applying for the single window counselling process. Interestingly, this year the number of TNEA application forms sold was higher by 19,281 compared to the previous year.

    Statistics revealed that during TNEA 2008, as many as 1,38,855 application forms were sold but only 1,27,899 aspirants eventually submitted the filled-in forms.

    According to observers of the higher education scene in Tamil Nadu, there could be three reasons why the 25,000-odd students did not submit the application forms.

    "Some of the students could have already booked a management quota seat in a preferred branch of study in self-financing engineering colleges knowing pretty well that they may not stand a chance on merit, which is the sole determinant for admission into government quota seats. Second, a section of the students would have fared poorly in the Plus Two board examinations and therefore preferred to move on to arts and science colleges. The third factor could be that students would have purchased the TNEA forms before the Plus Two results were declared, but could have failed in the qualifying examination," explained an observer.

    The TNEA application forms were issued from May 6, whereas the results of the State Board Plus Two examinations were declared a week later on May 14. "On the very first day of the sale, there was a huge demand with 64,245 aspirants purchasing the forms. The next day more than 29,000 forms were sold and on the third day 15,000-odd aspirants joined the race," he pointed out.

    Authorities at Anna University in Chennai have already released the tentative schedule for the TNEA this year. As per this, the random number will be allotted to each of the 1,32,572 applicants on June 20. The random number serves as a tie-breaker when two or more aspirants are tied in the same cut-off with similar qualifying parameters, including same marks in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and date of birth.

    The rank list is slated to be published on June 25 and the counselling for academic stream candidates is expected to commence on July 10. This year the state government is keen on completing the entire admission process for government quota seats in engineering colleges by August 16 unlike last year when the admission continued till end-August.

    "We are working out a schedule to ensure that all the 1.32 lakh applicants are accommodated in the counselling slots as per the new schedule. Possibly, we could increase the number of students who are called in for each counselling slot to 3,000. The decision will be taken by the TNEA coordination committee," professor Uthariaraj said.